The invention relates to a system architecture, and in particular, to a system architecture for attaching and controlling multiple feeding and finishing devices in a reproduction machine.
In the early days of copiers, copies were fed to a tray where the operator took them and performed manual finishing operations. These manual operations ranged from simple collation and stapling to more sophisticated operations such as folding and inserting in an envelope for mailing. Later products incorporated finishing functionality within the print engine to relieve the operator of these manual finishing functions. Finishing operations included collation, stapling and in more recent products, binding. The same revolution has also occurred in feeding applications. Operators originally placed the document to be copied on the platen, closed the cover and pushed the start print button. Now, automatic document feeders and recirculating document handlers have become commonplace.
There has been an evolution of incorporating additional feeding and finishing functions within the print engine. However, the functions provided have often fallen short of the need of many customers. For example, in central reproduction environments there is a great amount of effort put into finishing the documents that are printed. To date the majority of these have been in the form of off-line finishing devices. Customers typically produce copies on a print engine, stack them on a skid, then take them over to an off-line or chain of off-line finishing devices to complete the final product. There are also environments which have other specific finishing applications, for example, a centralized printer attached to a network which is used by many individuals. In one scenario, everyone sends their output to the printer. An individual walking up to the printer must sort through the jobs currently sitting in the output tray and place them in alphabetically categorized bins. This is a manual operation and is subject to human error such as jobs being put in the incorrect bin.
One answer to the above problems has been to incorporate the feeding and finishing operations into the print engine. This was well received early on when the collation and stapling were the majority of feeding and finishing operations. Customers, however, are requiring more and more sophisticated feeding and finishing operations. It is increasingly becoming inefficient to follow a course of developing feeding and finishing functions specific to a single product. This is a very time consuming activity, requires enormous resources and also leads to duplication of activities. As an example, there are many products offered that provide the option of stapling. Many of these products have different stapling operations. It would be desirable to avoid the large duplication of effort required.
Another issue is the large number of third party vendors which have a great deal of experience in the feeding and finishing technologies. It is a waste of resources to duplicate the off-line feeding and finishing functions currently provided by third party vendors. It would be desirable, therefore, to develop a standard for attaching feeding and finishing devices to print engines This standard would be used both internally for developing new products and externally by third party vendors for providing the wide range of feeding and finishing functions to our customers.
It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to avoid the duplication of efforts for developing feeding and finishing capabilities and to allow third party vendors to develop or adapt feeding and finishing devices to standard print engines. It is another object of the present invention to be able to organize the document feeding and/or finishing accessories in the sequence that meets the needs for a fully automated job and to be able to attach finishing or feeder devices in any order that the operator decides is appropriate for the application.
Other advantages of the present invention will become apparent as the following description proceeds, and the features characterizing the invention will be pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this specification.